Trout Unlimited is teaming up with various fly fishing and casting clubs in the Bay Area to create a collaborative Youth Education Program. The first kickoff event was held at the Golden Gate Anglers Club in Golden Gate Park on May 19, 2018 and more than 40 kids attended. Instructions included fly casting, fly tying, knots, and conservation/stream ecology. For future events please check out the BAYFF website at https://www.youthflyfishers.org

This week, the Alameda County Water District was awarded over $6.1 million in grant funding to help fund two local fish ladder projects that will play a critical role in restoring threatened steelhead trout to Alameda Creek. With approvals from two different agencies made on the very same day, the District is set to receive up to $825,000 from the California Coastal Conservancy and $5.36 million form the California Wildlife Conservation Board for the projects. Both grants are through programs authorized by the voter-approved Water Quality, Supply and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014 (Proposition 1).

Construction of the first fish ladder will begin later this spring, to be followed by a second fish ladder that will be built in partnership with the Alameda County Flood Control District. Once both ladders are complete, steelhead trout - a federally-listed, threatened species - will have a direct route to pass the District's rubber dams and a large flood control structure to gain access to the Alameda Creek watershed for the first time in 50 years.

The John Muir Chapter of Trout Unlimited is one of many non-profit groups including the Alameda Creek Alliance in the Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup and has been active in supporting the District's funding efforts.

The John Muir Chapter of Trout Unlimited has been awarded an $8000 grant to help support the Putah Creek Wild Trout Restoration Project. As a further incentive to add additional money Trout Unlimited National is conducting a one-week challenge to each of the 46 chapters nationwide that received a grant. The challenge is for the Chapter to conduct a local fundraising effort during the week of Monday November 6 through Sunday November 12th, and depending the success of the local chapter in raising funds, Trout Unlimited/Orvis will distribute an additional $50,000 amongst the competing chapters.

You can access information now about the project at Embraceastream.org and search for John Muir Project, and during the week of November 6 donate at that same URL or directly at https://embraceastream.org/projects/john-muir. Donations are being requested in the amounts of $10 to $20 (or more). So please help us in this important work. Thank you.

The John Muir Chapter will be hosting a film event showing "Return of the River" the story of the Elwha River, before and after the removal of two dams, and nature's response to a free flowing river. The event will be held Sunday, October 22, at the New Parkway Theater in Uptown Oakland with the doors opening at 1230 and the film starting at 1pm (it is 70 minutes long). Tickets are $10, children under 12 are free. You can purchase tickets at Eventbrite.com, or at the door. After the film there will be a no host bar in a reserved room at nearby Drake's Dealership Brew Pub.

Trout and Salmon allow us broad discretion to "play in the fields of the Lord" when it comes to conservation. Gravity works cheap, and never takes a day off. Everything we do on the land is ultimately reflected by the health of our waters, and so we engage as advocates in issues as varied as hydropower to agriculture, forestry to climate change.

At first glance, Trout Unlimited's vision of ensuring that "robust populations of native and wild cold water fish once again thrive within their North American range, so that our children can enjoy healthy fisheries in their home waters" seems to provide similar latitude.

Not exactly. Nat all native fish are where they belong, and not all wild fish are beneficial. A few years ago, I had a public disagreement with Douglas Thompson, a professor at Connecticut College, over an opinion piece he ran in The New York Times describing how poor hatchery and stocking practices led him to give up trout fishing. In a snarky response, I wrote that Doug "waded in over his head" and that he should stop "carping at anglers" because the real problem facing native trout were habitat loss and climate change.

I was wrong. TU's scientists pointed to introduced trout (whether recently stocked or a legacy of early stocking) as well as climate change and habitat loss in our seminal "State of the Trout" report as major problems for native trout.

I am getting ready for the fan mail as I write this, but if you are fishing out West in bull trout habitat and catch a beautiful broke, whack the broke where regulations permit. Brook trout are native to the East and interbreed with threatened bull trout and outcompete cutthroat. If you are fishing in the Gila Trout wilderness, and come across a rainbow trout in a recovery area for Gila trout, eat the rainbow for dinner. Introduced rainbows compete and hybridize with native Gila.

Similarly, we should leverage the great relationships we have with state fish and wildlife agencies and help them reconsider stocking non-native fish on top of native trout (and dealing with legacies of trout stocked long ago). The place for stocked fish is generally not in the same waters occupied by reproducing populations of native fish.

Here are a few rules of the river for conservation minded anglers.

1. Know and celebrate your native trout and salmon. Take the opportunity to learn what fish are native to the waters you love to fish and how to identify them accurately.

2. Carefully and quickly release native fish such as brookies in the East; or cutthroat and many other trout species in the West; or rainbows along the Pacific Rim.

3. If you want to take a picture of a fish that you don't plan to eat, do so quickly, and without taking it out of the water.

5. Carefully release wild fish form rivers where wild fish persist in the absence of natives or don't pose a threat to natives such as the Henry's Fork, Madison, Beaverkill, and the Savage.

6. Enjoy an occasional non-native wild or stocked trout or salmon for the table if you catch it in waters occupied by native trout such as rainbows in the South Fork of the Snake or salmon from the Great Lakes (regulations permitting of course!).

7. Don't be sanctimonious. Conservation is a long game. Patiently educating people about ways to protect wild and native trout fisheries creates a lot more converts than showing everyone else that you are pure and smart.

We want to share some exciting news with you. After six months of planning and preparation, we’re happy to announce the formation of the John Muir – East Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited. As the newest California chapter, the John Muir chapter’s territory includes all of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Originally part of the North Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited – which included San Francisco, the North Bay, and the East Bay – several East Bay members with the support of TU staff, the California Council, and the North Bay Chapter decided to form a separate chapter for the East Bay Area.

The Bay Area is one of the most populous regions in the state, and with a territory representing two-thirds of the region, membership in the North Bay Chapter began to swell. The California Council and leadership of the North Bay Chapter understood and agreed that the area was too large to provide an adequate level of service to all of its members and watersheds. To that end, members living in the East Bay were contacted to gauge interest in the formation of a chapter devoted to the East Bay.

After several meetings, a group of volunteers took the plunge and formed a new chapter. The new chapter is known as the John Muir – East Bay Chapter, Trout Unlimited (though we’ve been using John Muir for short.) While independent of the North Bay Chapter, the close ties many of you have to the chapter mean we will continue to work closely; and long-time North Bay member and officer Peter Mangarella was named President of our new group. A board of directors has also been selected.

Effective immediately, members of the North Bay Chapter who reside in Alameda or Contra Costa counties will now be members of the John Muir Chapter. The new chapter is just getting under way, and we encourage all of you to visit our new website (www.ebtu.org) as well as follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We are also planning an inaugural membership meeting in January, so stay tuned for details!

We are proud and excited by the formation of this new Chapter. We believe this will provide better service to the nearly 900 members who live in the East Bay. We want to thank all the volunteers who have worked hard to make this new chapter a reality, and we want to thank John Sikora, from the El Dorado Chapter, and Erik Young from the North Bay Chapter for their invaluable support and counsel which was critical to the formation of this new chapter.

On November 12, 2016 the John Muir Chapter of Trout Unlimited recently held its first public, educational event at Quarry Lakes Regional Park in Fremont. Partnering with Bay Nature Magazine, The East Bay Regional Parks District and members of the Oakland Casting Club, we held a half-day Introduction to Fishing Clinic. More than 40 attendees of all ages, mostly new to fishing, attended this event. The event started off with a nature walk led by an EBRPD naturalist followed by sessions on Stream Biology, Where to Fish Locally, Spin Casting and Fly Casting were popular among the participants who all got plenty of hands on experience in casting. A few of the attendees who had limited experience in casting were overheard to remark “now I know why it never worked for me when I tried it before!” Kids especially enjoyed handling the wiggly aquatic critters collected that morning from local creeks, and seeing the traveling aquarium of fish residing in our local waters that the Regional Parks District brought to this event.

The more than a dozen volunteers who served as instructors got to hang out together for an after event picnic to get to know each other and talk about future efforts. We are planning to increase the work we do together with these local organizations to further participation in our new TU chapter and in conservation and public outreach in our local region.

Welcome to the website of the recently formed John Muir East Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited, covering Alameda and Contra Costa Counties in California. The mission of the Chapter is to advocate for, protect, and restore natural freshwater ecosystems, healthy watersheds, and sustainable populations of wild salmonids. We are excited to be a part of the East Bay conservation community, and are looking forward to working with you and others in this very important work.